Apple to Get Emmy Award For Device

By STEVE LOHR

Published: August 22, 2001

Apple Computer is getting an unusual customer endorsement today -- an Emmy award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Apple's Emmy is an engineering award for FireWire, an advanced data-transport technology for connecting peripheral devices to computers. FireWire has many uses, but in television production it is used to connect digital cameras and video-editing equipment to a computer, and then shuttle images quickly and flawlessly back and forth.

Apple developed FireWire, but it is now an industry standard known as IEEE 1394. Today, it is included not only in all Macintosh computers, but also in digital cameras and in many personal computers made by Apple rivals. FireWire has been adopted as a standard for high-definition television as well.

In the television industry, FireWire has been an important technology that has allowed professionals to edit programs on desktop and even notebook computers, displacing very costly specialized film-editing equipment. Apple began including FireWire on its PowerMac machines -- the line popular with graphics and entertainment production professionals -- in early 1999.

In the last year, desktop editing using Apple's hardware and software has increasingly become the norm in the television industry. ''This seemed to be the year that the bloom was on the rose,'' said John Leverence, vice president of awards for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which will give the award tonight.

FireWire is one of the technologies that Apple regards as crucial to its strategy to increase its share of the personal computer market at a time when the industry is suffering. The company is trying to position itself at the center of home ''digital hubs,'' with its Macintosh machines and software like its iMovie and Quicktime delivering new uses and opening new markets for personal computing. And Apple is putting increasing emphasis on allowing consumers to edit their home movies as if they were professionals.

''FireWire is gaining serious momentum in the last year across our industry and in consumer electronics,'' said Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president for hardware engineering of Apple. ''It's part of our digital hub strategy, and I think the gains and the recognition FireWire is getting are further evidence that we're heading in the right direction.''

FireWire was developed at Apple in the 1990's, before Steven P. Jobs returned from exile in 1997 and revived the company.

''FireWire is now in tens of millions of devices, and it's a real success story,'' said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering, a consulting firm.